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The Skin Gap: A Pervasive Gender Inequality You’ve Never Heard Of

May 31, 2016

Forced modesty clearly subjugates, but what about the pressure to uncover? With summer nearly upon us, newsstands are replete with magazine covers instructing women on how to get the “perfect beach bod,” but this is not a seasonal phenomenon. In an age when gender equality is on everyone’s mind, there is a discrepancy between the sexes that no one is talking about — call it “the skin gap.”

The skin gap is the difference in the amount of skin men and women are expected to show in the same social setting. Images of the nearly flawless, scantily-clad female form bombard girls and women year round via billboards, ads, TV shows, and movies, subliminally conveying how a woman ought to dress and how her body ought to look. Studies show that there is a direct correlation between girls and women viewing such pictures and female body dissatisfaction. As many as eight out of ten women (more than twice as many women than men) are unhappy with their figures, leading to depression, obsessive dieting, eating disorders and plastic surgery.

The skin gap begins in toddlerhood as mommy-blogger of BinkinesandBriefcases.com, Stephanie Giese, writes in her viral blog post: “Do you see something wrong here? These are shorts for 4 year olds. Both size XS (4-5), Shorts on top – Cherokee Girls vs. Shorts on bottom – Shaun White Boys. Inseam on the girl’s shorts was 1 inch, Inseam on same size (XS) shorts from the boys department was almost 7 times longer.”

Giese also discovers that the inseam on the (size 7) shorts found in the Women’s section was not even 2 inches – less than 1 inch longer than the shorts intended for toddlers.

The skin gap only closes when a woman has exceeded a certain number in either age or pounds (remember when Carrie Fisher returned to “Star Wars?”). Once they no longer fit the Western Beauty Standard, our society encourages its “plus-sized” or women who are “too old” to cover up.

FAQ’s

1. Aren’t you slut shaming?

We are not trying to and hope we haven’t offended anyone. We believe that everyone should live self-actualized lives and treat all people with dignity. In the Western world it is completely normal for a woman to wear more revealing clothes than a man. Our objective is to create awareness that this imbalance exists and to start a conversation about whether this is damaging to women. Everyone knows that forced modesty subjugates a woman, but there is rarely talk about how a cultural and psychological coercion encouraging women to expose themselves could be equally harmful. When women feel pressured to display their bodies more than men do, there is a danger of women being judged more by their appearance than by their character, personality and talents.

“As a secular American teen, I was so excited to get my first bikini and pair of Daisy Dukes, because it was a sign of being ‘grown up,’” said Allison Josephs, Founder of Jew in the City (and writer and director of ‘The Skin Gap’). “But something unexpected happened: I’d always feel gross when random men would give me the ‘up down.’ I never did anything or said anything because I had no language to express what I was feeling.”

“A few years later, I became an Orthodox Jew and started covering up purely to follow ‘the rules,’ and I discovered something fascinating: covering up actually made me feel empowered. The first time I wore a long skirt and a random guy at the mall gave me the ‘up down’ but had nothing to see, inside I screamed, ‘Yes!’ No one can deny that the skin gap exists, and if this video helps one more woman feel more empowered about her body, then we’ll consider it a success.”

2. Why did an Orthodox Jewish website make a video about gender equality? Don’t you have some of your own gender equality issues?

What most people don’t realize (and what we publicize at Jew in the City) is that there are many super accomplishedOrthodox womenleading fulfilling, self-actualized lives and that there is an undeniable amount of respect and value given to women in most traditional Jewish sources. To name a few: the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt and will merit the final redemption due to righteous women, Eve is last in Creation, as woman is considered to be at the pinnacle of creation (by the way, many Orthodox Jews also believe in science), Sarah was considered a greater prophet than her husband (Abraham), women are guaranteed sexual satisfaction as part of their marriage document – a document which is thousands of years old, and though polygamy was once permitted thousands of years ago, the rabbis elected to ban it. As it happens, there is no skin gap in the Orthodox Jewish community. Men naturally almost always cover their upper arms and upper legs and everything in between. Women are expected to dress according to the same standard.

Even with all the positives, though, there are of course some challenges vis a vis women and Orthodoxy. Some of those challenges – like how a Jewish divorce occurs have very successful solutions, which we promote. Even so, not every aspect of women in Orthodox Judaism will ever fit completely into a Western gender model, and we believe it is fair for every woman to work through these issues and choose her own way. But these challenges are well-known and often discussed. No one is talking about the skin gap and that’s why we are.

We asked a shailah and were given a psak that for chinuch purposes it was permitted.

4. So then what’s the solution to the skin gap?

It seems that the first step is to create awareness and for consumers to vote with their pocketbooks. The skin gap is EXTREMELY pervasive throughout all of Western society, but every woman can take this information and use it as she sees fit. If enough women care to change the “norm,” we believe change could occur.

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